Sibling of an Adoptee (Adoption)

Member Name: Plumptious

Product:	Adoption
Date:	07/02/01 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gives the child in a bad situation a chance of a better life.

Disadvantages: Creates a lot of "what ifs".

MY FRIEND
~~~~~~
I once had a friend who was a retired psychiatrist. I met him when I was a just green student. I was waiting for my tutor, and he was beavering away at his desk in the same room. We started chatting, and clicked.

He was doing his his PhD in Computing when I met him. Over the years, I found out that he simply felt like doing something else after retiring from psychiatry. I suppose that it would have made him a Doctor Doctor.

He was also a qualified goldsmith and married with five children. If you think it takes a lot of training to be a doctor, it takes even longer to become a psychiatrist. The man seemed to have reached the top in everything he had tried. I consider each one of these things an achievement, and doubt if I will ever achieve as much.


You would think that such a person, with a large family of his own, and specialising in pyschiatry, would be pretty clued up on self fulfilment. And yet, within seconds of our first meeting, he had told me that he was adopted. We weren't even discussing anything like that at the time. He simply felt that it was something that had to be said. He was in his 60s and I, an extremely green 18 year old.

It wasn't until years later that it began to dawn upon me how much it must have been hurting him. The fact that all these years after the event, the fact that he was adopted it still had the power to hurt him. Despite all his professional training and achievements, there was something fundamental within him which had never healed.


MY SISTER
~~~~~~~
I was brought up by my mother, who took me around the world with her. My parents were divorced when I was five, but I didn't know my father that well as the marriage had broken down long before that.

My mother had a baby girl when I was two years old. During her postnatal confinement, my paternal grandmother stayed to look after my mother and the new baby.
<
br>After a month, my mother had to go back to work. My father didn't help out much in either financial or practical terms. When it was time to go, my paternal grandmother offered to take the baby with her to help my mother out. My mother was having difficulty coping. Something had gone wrong. I suspect that she was suffering from postnatal depression at the time.

When she felt on a more even keel, she asked for the baby to be returned. My grandmother refused.

This set the tone for the next few decades. I remember suicide threats from my grandmother if the baby was taken away, and when short visits were arranged, they didn't work. It seemed as though every other request and action by my sister had the power to irritate my mother, even sometimes driving her into the most phenomenal rages, which I had never seen before. As an adult, I think I would say that mother and child had never bonded.

As a child, I was simply aware that intervals of time, punctuated by preparations for my sister coming to stay, "for good this time". More often than not, negotiations would break down, and she wouldn't turn up. All in all, I estimate that we must have spent about two months in each other's company in our entire lives.


As I grew older, I began to write to her. Not frequently, just on birthdays and during hols. I would send presents which were flat and light, and when I began earning, cheques. I never got a reply.

It was strange. She would write to my mother twice a year, and sometimes enquire after me kindly. But yet her letters never contained any acknowledgement of my letters, and she never addressed anything to me.


Even when we were continents apart, I wanted to know her. The weird thing was that we were both being brought up as single children, but we were siblings, with the same mother and father, and only two years separated us in age.

I spent a lot of my chil
dhood alone. It wasn't all bad as I had all the toys I wanted and soon learnt to amuse myself. To this day, I find it very hard to be bored.

The flipside of being an only child shows up in the strangest things. The next time you dine with a group of people, look out for the slow eaters. The odds are that they will be an only child. There's no one to compete with for food and treats, you see.

The other thing is that I was a good athlete, but only in running and jumping. I never learnt to catch a ball. This would have required having someone to throw it to me. I was so embarassingly bad at catching things that one summer, my boss and two of my assistants actually took it upon themselves to teach me. I am proud to report that I was an able pupil, and they no longer feel compelled to lob paper balls at me.

I would sometimes wonder what effects my sister felt as a result of our separation, what her life was like.


The amazing thing is that this Sunday, I got hold of her email address. I sent her a note, and she actually replied! We have been communicating for the last two days. We are both amazed that we are suddenly communicating on a daily basis after all those decades of silence.

She has been very nice to me in the emails, but I don't know if she resents me for being the one who was "kept". I don't know how things will work out. What if I run out of things to say to her?

I've had some practice with my little brother, but our age gap is such is that I have always been more of a surrogate parent than sibling. I don't know what exactly one does with a sister.


I certainly don't think that my mother's role in all this was as commendable as it could have been, but having seen the way she reacted when my sister was around her, it seems as though the baby's physical wellbeing was best taken care of by the separation.


~~~ UPDATE 0
8/02/001 ~~~
After two days of exchanging emails, the emails I tried to send her have started bouncing. It's gone on for a couple of days, but the last one finally seemed to make it. I hope that she's aware of the problem and hasn't construed as me ignoring her.


~~~ UPDATE 06/05/01 ~~~
My sister and I are still corresponding, and seem to get on fairly well. We share a lot of the same views, although I'm a whole lot more outspoken than she is. She's a diplomatic little soul, very polite and discreet.

It's strange to think of the baby as a grown up. She's a responsible adult now, with a good job and a brilliant apartment. The complex that apartment is situated in even has its own library and cinema!


What struck me is that we spent a lot of time discussing what happened. She was very interested in what I could tell her about what happened, and any other news.

And this is why I'm adding this update.


It strikes me that this need to know is not an unusual one. It seems to be a natural instinct to want to know about what your origins were, and how things came to pass.

Equally, I have noticed a lot of mothers, forced to give up their babies through the circumstances they found themselves in, who continue to love them. Some even continue to buy the absent child presents and write them letters, even though they cannot be sure of ever presenting the child with it.


Please do tell me what you think, but doesn't it seem to be a logical thing to do, to make provision in a will for all these loving gifts to be stored, and ready to be presented to the child if it should ever come searching for its mother.

After all, all the gifts have been prepared, but we don't know if we'll be run over by a bus tomorrow. Making such a provision would ensure that the child would have a better chance of receiving these things.

Informat
ion about relatives, nice ones, eccentric ones, medical information about who suffered from what, are all things which are relevant to anyone. And by lodging such information with someone else, be it a few family members, an agency or a solicitor, the baby will stand a better chance of receiving it.


What do you think?

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